If you build it, they WILL NOT come. You can’t make sales or gain clients without having people visit your web site and learn about the products and services you have to offer. A website is your storefront on the main street of the world and is perceived the same as a brick and mortar building. So before you start generating traffic to your site, make sure it is everything you want it to be. We cover that topic in our Web Design Tips Blog.
There are two main methods for generating traffic to your web site, paid and free. They are both effective in their own way, but remember the “free” one will take your time to do in the area of writing, posting, etc.
The paid method of traffic generation is the easiest for you. The first form is Pay Per Click advertising where you have a small advertisement about your goods and/or services that links to your website on one of the search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) or on one of the social networks (facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). The ads display based on a person’s search words which are tied keywords you have selected to be associated with your ad (website design, graphic design, social media, etc.). So Jane Doe types website design in Google, and because that is one of your defined keywords in your Pay Per Click Campaign, your ad displays. The more competitive you are with your cost per click setting (how much you are willing to pay for a click on your ad), the higher your ad will display in relation to your competitors. You pay when someone clicks on the ad and goes to your website or landing page. Another paid method is e-mail marketing where you pay a company to email your offer/sale/ad to selected target lists that they own.
In most cases, webmaster prefer Pay Per Click advertising because it lets you determine who sees your ad(s) by the keywords you select, what area of the country or world you want it to display in, even age and education level, in some cases. The only issue you will have with generated leads from PPC Ads is if you have a badly design website, which we mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. You will get one chance to capture that potential customer/client, so make sure you have your best foot forward when you send them there.
The free methods of generating traffic work but require quite a bit of time and effort on your part or for someone you hire. Those methods include great site content, blogs, article writing, posting in industry specific forums/discussion areas, etc. The writing should be high quality and informative in order to get people to read it, recommend it and link to it. Don’t just start a blog because people say they are good for traffic generation, because a badly written blog can be worse than none at all. Make sure you have the time and capability to write the articles, or else hire someone to do it for you.
Search engines usually rank sites based on many characteristics including domain name age, back-links and content. You must update your site at least two times per week with unique quality content to make search engines visit your site everyday which will help you to take higher position. You can build your website on an expired domain to solve the age problem. Your main problem will be generating back-links to your site.
Traffic generation can be achieved with a good mix of both paid and free sources. Just make sure you have done your research and know which ones you want to use and how you will use them before your start.
